


Sweep The Ashes Dry

by significantowl



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-13
Updated: 2011-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-26 01:04:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Gwaine is a private investigator who does his research, Merlin is a psychic who helps people no-one else can, and there’s much more going on in the Barrel & Stake than meets the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweep The Ashes Dry

**Author's Note:**

> Written for gwaine_quest on lj, prompt 47: Modern AU, Gwaine is a private investigator, and Merlin is the psychic he hires to help him with a ghost spotting.

Merlin visibly flinched as he passed through the door of the pub, and his step faltered. Gwaine held his questions. He tried to feel something as he crossed the threshold himself, but no. Nothing. Same as when he'd been here on his own the night before, and the night before that.

The pub was a piece of history, and looked it. The Barrel and Stake was just down the street from Smithfield Market, where Londoners had traded livestock since the Middle Ages, as well as jousted and held fairs and executed each other, too. As with the market itself, the current Victorian-era building was only the pub’s most recent incarnation. Outside, heavy oaken doors and arched, mullioned windows greeted the street; inside, the stained wood of the bar was inlaid with mosaic tiles in deep blue and gold. A fire blazed in a brick hearth on the opposite wall, and the designs glinted prettily in the firelight.

Gwaine nudged Merlin’s arm. He wasn’t trying to be distracting, exactly, he knew that Merlin was concentrating, gathering first impressions. Merlin hadn’t allowed Gwaine to tell him anything about the bar at all, not even what area of London it was in, and had even gone so far as to keep his eyes closed during the cab ride there. Which meant that it had been quite some time since Merlin had actually _looked_ at Gwaine, and Gwaine had never been one to let situations he didn’t care for lie unchallenged.

Merlin turned towards Gwaine, his eyes half-focused, like he’d just been pulled from a nap. Still, better than nothing. “That table against the wall?” Gwaine asked, wondering if Merlin would even hear him.

Merlin must have, though, because he nodded and headed in the direction Gwaine indicated, while his eyes went back to surveying the room. Gwaine saw office workers lingering over pints before going home for supper, or out on the town; he wondered what Merlin saw.

They settled at a small, round table on stools with faded green cushions. Merlin seemed to re-surface, then, as he pulled his stool flush to the wall and leant back against the panelling. His eyes were bright and amused when he said, "Get us a pint? You're getting them free, right?"

"Took the job for a reason," Gwaine said, grinning, and it wasn’t a lie. He’d known from the start that the problem was a little out of his area, but his ad _did_ say, “No case too strange,” and beer was a very worthy currency in his book. Certainly worth a bit of a risk.

“Two pints please, Malcolm,” Gwaine said, propping against the bar. Malcolm raised his eyebrows at Gwaine, jerking his head toward Merlin in a question. Gwaine nodded. Yes, that man was the psychic Gwaine had decided to contact. Yes, something was likely to happen in the pub tonight.

Malcolm gave a calm nod in return. He was a composed, careful man, which was a good thing to be when your business was infested with ghosts. Whenever he rang Gwaine he took his mobile across the street to the market floor - every call had been punctuated by the shouts of traders in the background - and within the pub he and Gwaine got by entirely on body language. Which was a risk in its own right, but one they would have to continue to run.

Malcolm slid over two glasses of a deep brown ale brimming with foam. Two free pints were nothing compared to what the pub was losing every night. Dead men drank, apparently, and were even better than Gwaine at vanishing when it came time to pay a tab. Here was a lovely thought - if Gwaine and Merlin settled this job, there could be many more free pints to come. Gwaine took a hearty, frothy sip as he turned away from the bar, and caught Merlin smiling at him.

Gwaine had known a fair amount about Merlin Emrys before they’d first met earlier that week; it was his job, knowing things. The leather bracelet that never left Merlin’s wrist, his love of the colour blue, the way he never wore quite a heavy enough coat, and oh yes, the people he’d helped that no-one else could - Gwaine had it all documented, dated, and filed. He’d been aware of Merlin for some time as an interesting potential colleague, and a man he’d like to know. But nothing had prepared him for the full force of Merlin’s smile, or just how much he would like it.

The smile wasn’t gone by the time Gwaine retook his seat, but it had become a quieter thing, hovering at the edges of Merlin’s lips. “One pint, as ordered,” Gwaine said, handing it over. “Never let it be said I don’t take direction well.”

Merlin snorted, his fingers brushing Gwaine’s as they curled around the glass. “Only when you want to, am I right?”

True enough in some ways - as a private investigator Gwaine worked for himself and no-one else, and that was the way he preferred it. Gwaine wondered how clearly Merlin saw that. Could he look at Gwaine and see the day, many years ago now, that Gwaine had decided his future lay far, far outside a corporate park? But there was another angle here, and a point that Gwaine couldn’t leave unmade. “Ah,” Gwaine said, winking, “but you should see me when I’m properly motivated.”

Merlin scooted his stool right up to Gwaine’s. Gwaine knew his own smile was a pretty potent one, but that move still took him by surprise for a moment. Until, sadly, it became clear that Merlin was back to business. Breath tickling Gwaine’s ear, Merlin whispered, “How many people did you count when we first walked in?”

“Eighteen.”

“And now?”

The key to checking out a room without getting caught at it was to move naturally, fluidly. Gwaine threw his head back as if he were laughing at something Merlin had just said, then let his hair fall against his jaw as he angled in to whisper, “Thirty-two. Jesus. I only saw the door open once.”

Merlin’s knee pressed hard against Gwaine’s as he shifted even closer. "Someone’s making a show of force. Someone's feeling threatened."

"Means we're doing something right," Gwaine said, nerves prickling. He wondered if they were making themselves conspicuous, whispering so closely like this, but he didn't pull away. Merlin's breath was too soft on Gwaine's neck for that, his presence against Gwaine’s side too warm. Gwaine wanted him near, and only partly because Merlin was the only person in the room Gwaine could count on to be real. "How do you normally sort out a haunting?"

Merlin shook his head. "It’s not a haunting.”

“Not a haunting? See, that sounds like a good thing, but here I’m betting it’s not.”

“Hauntings are personal.” Merlin looked down at his glass, hesitating. Gwaine wondered how often he spoke of these things out loud, how often he had an ear he trusted to listen. “They’re driven by what the spirit wants, something it strives for, and considering how many are in here, I should have more desires coming at me right now than I could parse out. But this is more controlled, it’s -”

Merlin broke off an instant before Gwaine felt it - pressure on his back, someone’s hand. Gwaine nearly whirled round and knocked it off, then hated himself for being so twitchy. He pulled away from Merlin slowly, a controlled movement, to face a woman in a grey skirt suit with expensively highlighted hair.

Her hand was completely solid. Gwaine could distinctly feel each fingertip, and the weight of her palm - warm, in a way that generally meant blood stirring under the skin.

Gwaine couldn’t begin to tell whether she was alive or dead.

She smiled at him, direct and predatory, which was no help at all. If Gwaine were a hungry ghost, he’d probably smile like he was on the pull, too. Then she spoke, and her voice was ordinary - a light soprano, nothing chilling or otherworldly about it. “You don’t have a light, do you?”

“Don’t, sorry.” She was still smiling, and Gwaine found himself grinning back. It was utterly reflexive, and yet, not a such bad idea now that he thought about it - keeping the suspected undead happy whenever possible was a good rule of thumb, if you asked Gwaine.

“If you’d like -”

"No," Merlin said, tightly. "He would not like. Tell her, Gwaine. You need to tell her."

Definitely undead, then. Gwaine held out the moment, making the most of the opportunity to observe one close up, staring at her, feeling her touch. He even sniffed in her direction, which must have been hilarious - it got half a laugh out of Merlin, despite his obvious agitation - but it did no good. Nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to smell save stale beer and woodsmoke.

Merlin made a noise that sounded disturbingly - and by that, Gwaine also meant _deliciously_ \- like a growl. “No thanks, love,” Gwaine said quickly, despite being sorely tempted to stay quiet in the hopes he might get to hear it again.

The woman - the ghost - frowned. “You have a drink. You have a partner.”

“Yes,” Merlin said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “He does. And there’s nothing left for you to ask.”

The ghost didn’t fade into the wall, or disappear in a flash; nothing so spectacular as that. She dropped her hand and walked away, high heels clicking on the scuffed wooden floor.

Gwaine let out a breath, looking around. The pub was full of people talking, drinking, and watching BBC Sport, and he couldn’t begin to determine how many of them were doing so without breathing. When he’d took the job, he’d not been thinking of _identifying_ the ghosts as the hard part. He was observant by nature as well as by trade, and he’d figured that would do the trick: check for incongruous clothing, cold spots, people flickering in and out of sight, strange odours, objects moving of their own volition. Find one or more of those things, find a ghost.

He’d imagined the next step an exercise in the well-worn cliche of going up to it and saying, “Look mate, I know you’re dead.” Whether the ghost would disappear in a puff of smoke after that or not, Gwaine couldn’t guess, but the point was, the next move would be up to the ghost.

“Over half of them,” Merlin said, absently, like he didn’t even know he was speaking aloud. “It’s got more than half of them.” He grabbed at Gwaine’s shoulder, turning him slightly. Closing his eyes, Merlin pressed his palm to Gwaine’s shoulder blade, where the ghost’s hand had been.

And swore. What shocked Gwaine more than that - and he’d never heard Merlin swear before - was the way his whole body drew up, taut as a bow, and his face went preternaturally still.

“Loo,” Merlin said, voice strained. “Now.” He stood, his hand fisting Gwaine’s shirt at the shoulder, stretching it upwards.

“So forward,” Gwaine said. “But then, I like that in a partner.”

It earned him a flash of a smile - a definite victory, Gwaine thought, right then. Keeping tight hold of Gwaine’s shirt, Merlin half-dragged Gwaine through the pub to the alcove with the loos. Gwaine caught sight of Malcolm behind the bar, eyes tracking them while he pulled a pint. Merlin banged on the gents’ with his free hand; when there was no sound from within, he pushed open the door and pulled Gwaine inside.

It was simple - a toilet, a sink, and a sad towel holder half-falling off the wall. No stalls. Merlin locked the door behind them. The knob was very loose, but there was a thin, weak bolt installed above it as a back-up.

“I need to touch your back where she touched you, is that all right?”

“No complaints here,” Gwaine said.

“Don’t say that,” Merlin said, an unhappy twist to his mouth, “you don’t really know. Sometimes people don’t - like it.” He took a breath. “It’s going to be intrusive. It needs to be for this, but -” He glanced away, like he couldn’t look at Gwaine while he said the rest. “It always is when I touch people. I can’t really turn it off.”

Gwaine caught one of Merlin’s hands, squeezed his fingers, and folded them around the hem of Gwaine’s shirt. He spoke with all the certainty that he could muster; he was a rock, a boulder, solid and strong, and that was what Merlin would hear and feel. “Try me.”

Merlin nodded, clearing his throat. “Turn around,” he said. He began rucking up Gwaine’s shirt in the back, exposing Gwaine’s upper back; Gwaine, deciding his mission was to help in any way he could, reached down and pulled the thing off entirely.

“Well, all right then,” Merlin murmured, a smile in his voice. Merlin lay his palm along Gwaine’s back, and then - happy with the positioning, presumably - pressed in.

His breath caught. Gwaine heard it, and wished he could see Merlin’s face; wondered if Merlin’s eyes were open or closed, if there were long lines of tension running down his neck. Whatever Merlin was doing, he hoped it didn’t hurt.

Merlin’s free hand gripped Gwaine’s waist, fingers digging in just above his trousers. He didn’t speak. Gwaine wanted to check on him, to make certain he was all right, but he didn’t want to blunder in and ruin anything, either. He focused instead on the points of connection between them - the steady warmth of Merlin’s hands; Merlin’s breath slipping over Gwaine’s neck; Merlin’s long, solid body, right there, just a hand’s breath behind him, close enough to reach out and pull in flush against his back.

Gwaine’s fingers twitched, and he balled up his shirt, kneading it.

Merlin’s head dropped to Gwaine’s shoulder, his forehead resting against Gwaine’s skin. It was sticky, sweaty, and Gwaine couldn’t help himself any longer. “Okay there?”

A long pause, then: “Yeah,” Merlin exhaled. “Yeah.”

Slowly, so that Merlin could stop him if he wanted to, Gwaine lifted his hand to cover Merlin’s at his side, Gwaine’s fingers curling around Merlin’s slim wrist, bumping up against his soft leather band.

Merlin breathed out again, steadier. Gwaine didn’t know if he was helping, if he were grounding Merlin somehow, but he liked to think so. Merlin’s skin was warm - hot, almost - and Gwaine could feel the thrumming of his pulse. Gwaine barely saw the dingy, mottled wall in front of him; he was thinking about the tapering of Merlin’s wrist and the slender strength in his fingers.

Merlin laughed.

“What?” Gwaine asked, wrong-footed but smiling, because that had been a real, true laugh.

“You know how I take my coffee,” Merlin said.

“I do.” Gwaine wasn’t ashamed of having been caught doing his homework on someone he wanted to work with. And he wasn’t bothered by the thought of _how_ he’d been caught out - Merlin probably was aware of that, too, and was that why he suddenly seemed happy?

One thing Gwaine was, though, was curious, and he thought that Merlin might actually appreciate a little open, unafraid curiosity. “How did you know? I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“Well, you were, and you weren’t.. We’re always thinking about more than we realise, and words are only part of that. There are instincts, emotions, flashes of images.... I’m holding a coffee cup in there, you’re looking at my hand - the coffee’s milky, and you think I probably have a sweet tooth. I’ve got my red jumper pulled down over my fingers because they were out of those insulating sleeve things.” He paused. “My turn. What were you using? Binoculars? Long-range camera lens?”

“Camera,” Gwaine said. He thought, _I’d hearing about you for ages,_ but didn’t say it. Why should he, when they were like this, and Merlin _knew_? Why try to force Merlin into communicating like everyone else, being like everyone else, when he didn’t have to?

Squeezing Merlin’s hand, deepening that point of contact, Gwaine thought, _I can’t count how many times I’ve heard, “Merlin Emrys helped me.” From people who never knew how you did it, because no matter what the danger, you always worked alone, and you never told anyone “no.”_

Merlin turned his head, his cheek sliding into the slope of Gwaine’s neck. It was bound to mean something - actions always did - but unlike Merlin, without words, Gwaine couldn’t be certain as to what.

Gwaine had always liked a little mystery, a little challenge. Made life exciting.

There came a knocking on the door, three short raps, and Gwaine startled in spite of himself. Behind him, Merlin said, “Ah.”

“Not a punter needing the gents’, I take it?”

“No.” Merlin pulled away from Gwaine; he’d been so close and warm that a lonely chill immediately swept over Gwaine’s back. “And it knows that I’ve worked it out.”

Rap, rap, rap.

Gwaine eyed the door. “So why doesn’t it just come in, if it wants in? Surely that crap lock doesn’t mean much to a ghost?”

“Because we wouldn’t. The lock, the door, the walls, they wouldn’t matter to most spirits, but these have been.... programmed, basically. Like the one who approached you - she could only ask about a smoke, a drink, or sex. She had boundaries. Something thinks it knows what humans do in bars.” Merlin paused, glancing toward the door. “Or right outside them. It knows nobody smokes inside anymore, but it also knows people don’t go far. And it would really have liked for you to take that light.”

“You said this wasn’t a haunting,” Gwaine said slowly. “What is it?”

Rap, rap, rap.

“A possession,” Merlin said.

+

Gwaine and Merlin walked out of the loo past a silent queue of men in dress trousers and shirts. The first one in line reached reflexively for the door Merlin held open for him, but made no move to go inside. There was no reaction to the fact that Gwaine came out topless - it didn’t cross his mind to put his shirt back on until Merlin turned back, arched a brow, and said, “Really?”

Gwaine slow-smiled at him, and Merlin laughed, his cheeks flushing pink. The ghosts just stood there, watching with flat, uncurious eyes; for the first time, Gwaine could actually tell that they were dead.

He slipped his shirt over his head, hating that too-long moment when the fabric cut off his vision. He pulled it down to his waist and flexed the fingers of his right hand, testing out a fist. If they were solid, he could hit them; it didn’t matter if they were alive or not. And that’s what he would do, if they came for Merlin. He would hit them all.

Merlin didn’t lead him back to their table, but picked his way through the crowd to stop in front of the brick fireplace. He contemplated it, head tilted. “In the time you’ve been here, have you ever seen anyone tend this fire? Or lay it?”

“No.”

Merlin was nodding before Gwaine even got the word out, clearly having anticipated his answer. “When you look around, you’re seeing what it wants you to see. The clothes, the hairstyles, the mobile phones.” He sighed. “The faces. The spirits don’t own those faces anymore.”

There was never any doubt that he would ask - if there was truth, Gwaine wanted it - but still he swallowed, buying himself a moment. “And when you look around? What do you see?”

“What you see, and underneath.” Merlin hadn’t looked away from the fire once, and its flickering light threw long, shifting shadows on his profile. “Scorched skin and blackened bones. You’ve owned them for centuries, haven’t you?” His tone was sharp, and Gwaine knew Merlin wasn’t talking to him any longer. “When they drink, they feed you. You burn brighter. And when they give away your light, you get it back ten times over, don’t you? You get to breathe and dance and send sparks into the world. I know you were given their lives. I don’t care. That doesn’t excuse what you’re doing with their deaths.”

The fire licked out, sparks sizzling through the air and falling not an inch from Merlin’s foot. He didn’t flinch. Gwaine planted his feet and stood firm beside him.

Merlin looked at him, a smile pulling at his lips, like he couldn’t quite believe Gwaine was still there. “Ever met an elemental before?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Gwaine replied. “And right now, can’t say I’m regretting that, either.”

“They’re as old as the world. They’re nature, when it comes down to it, air and earth and fire and water. You know how we use nature to sustain us? Sometimes it decides to return the favour.” Merlin regarded the fire. “This one - it got so much power from society, a long time ago. Do you know what they used to do here, when this was all fields beside the market? I didn’t realise until I felt the imprint she left on you, but you,” Merlin’s lips twitched, “you probably did your research.”

“ _Hell_ ,” Gwaine said. “Counterfeiters were boiled in oil, and heretics -”

“Burnt at the stake,” Merlin said quietly. “Every one of them. They’re howling on the inside. They’ve been forced into these roles - it learned, see, what human norms and human rules could do for it. You got bold and bright and clever,” Merlin said, facing the fire again, jaw set, “but that never made you _right_.”

The fire didn’t lick out this time. The flames moved like a whip, striking straight at Merlin. A woman at a nearby table gasped - she was alive, then, he would have to look out for her too - as Gwaine yanked Merlin backwards, out of the fire’s reach. It retreated back into its hearth, and Gwaine could have sworn he heard it hiss in displeasure.

“Think I’ll be getting the extinguisher now,” Gwaine said. He was only half-joking. It probably wouldn’t do much good, but it would be damn nice to have by his side nonetheless.

Merlin grinned, faintly. “You already have, sort of. You’ve heard of setting a back fire?”

Gwaine’s pulse raced. “I’m not sure what you’re planning, there,” he said, swallowing, “but I don’t think Malcolm is going to pay us if you burn down his pub.” He reached for Merlin’s hand and squeezed, just to make certain Merlin knew what - make that _who_ \- Gwaine was truly worried about.

Merlin started to turn away, and Gwaine tugged at his hand. “Hey. Partner. I can’t help if you don’t explain what you’re going to do.”

“I -” Merlin worried his lip. “They’re radiating heat and pain,” he said. “I can take what I feel, concentrate it, and push it back. They’ll burn out, and the elemental will starve.”

“Sounds safe.”

Merlin shrugged. “You’re going to be able to tell fairly quickly who’s not a spirit in here. Will you get them out?”

“You take care of the dead, I’ll take care of the living.” Gwaine eyed Merlin. “That includes you, by the way. No-one’s going out in a blaze of glory here, literal or otherwise.”

“Cheers, Gwaine,” Merlin said, shooting him a grin. His hand slipped from Gwaine’s as he turned, facing the room.

Gwaine didn’t know what to expect, but somewhere in the back of his mind he’d already made a decision: if Merlin turned into a real, actual fireball, Gwaine would reach into the flames, throw him to the floor, smother him with his body if that’s what it took to put him out.

That was the trick to turning fear into calm. Know the worst-case scenario; know how you’d handle it.

When half of the eyes in the room suddenly focused on Merlin - people turning away from the bar, standing up at their tables, staring - Gwaine knew that he’d begun.

It was sweat on his forehead, at first. It trickled down into his eyes as his face rapidly flushed - not pink, but a deep, purplish red. Gwaine glanced toward the hearth to see what was happening there; the fire was looming, billowing out into the room, and Gwaine didn’t care if he caused a problem, or broke Merlin’s concentration, he grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away.

Merlin didn’t even look at him. Heat bled through his clothes.

The fire struck out again. Malcolm was pushing his way out from behind the bar, but he couldn’t get close, between the dead who were moving slowly, inexorably forward, and the living who were shouting and jumping up from their seats.

Merlin opened his eyes, and they were burning, a bright, hot gold. Gwaine heard screams, and he tore his gaze away from Merlin because he’d promised, he’d promised he’d take care of people -

He sucked in a breath. No more dress clothes, no more expensive hair; the dead had shed them all. Now Gwaine saw the burnt flesh. Now he saw the bones.

The ten or so people left who were whole and breathing were making like mad for the door. Pint glasses crashed to the floor, stools toppled, and people pushed and shoved, shrieking whenever that meant stumbling up against charred skin. Gwaine was torn between going to help control the stampede - _he’d promised_ \- and standing with Merlin.

Merlin fell to his knees, and that decided that.

Behind them, the fire spit and sputtered. Malcolm was approaching it with a bucket of water; Gwaine didn’t think it would be that easy, but he also didn’t think it could hurt.

The water sizzled when it hit the flames. They leapt back up, but only half as tall as before.

“Good man,” Gwaine said. He was on his knees behind Merlin, now, holding his shoulders, and Christ, they were hot to the touch. The dead were coming closer, and Gwaine didn’t know what they wanted, what they would do, what _he_ could do to best make things right. He thought, _If they throw themselves on the fire, if they offer themselves to the embers and make it burn high again, I will pick Merlin up and carry him out of here, and Malcolm can follow us if he wants._

Merlin stretched out a hand, trembling with effort. A blackened, bony thing stopped in front of him and extended its own skeletal hand. When a finger touched Merlin’s skin, the entire body collapsed, disintegrating into a swirling, choking cloud of ash.

Merlin shook; Gwaine wrapped his arms tight around his chest. More dead were waiting, and Merlin held his arms open wide, because that was what Merlin did; he gave.

+

It was a dusty, sweaty silence.

Merlin’s eyes were closed, and his head hung limp, knocking against his shoulder. His skin was a violent, blotchy red, and streaked with soot. Gwaine carefully slid his arms under him to pick him up, and when Merlin’s forehead fell against the skin of Gwaine’s neck, Gwaine swore at the searing contact.

Malcolm had thrown bucket after bucket on the fire; he had another one, now, hovering over Merlin. “Pour it over his chest,” Gwaine said. “Keep it away from his mouth for now. Don’t want to choke him.”

There were rooms upstairs, five bedrooms with a bath at the end of the corridor. When Malcolm had purchased the pub six months before, he’d decided not to let the rooms - too few people were willing to share a bath with strangers these days, and even fewer were interested in paying enough to make the work of running lodgings worth it.

Gwaine kicked at the bathroom door before Malcolm had even reached the handle to open it. He set Merlin in the old clawfoot tub, gently, holding his head upright, and knelt on the floor behind it.

Gwaine’s palm was blistering where it touched Merlin’s skin, and his fingers were turning pink. “There’s ice downstairs?”

“Yes,” Malcolm said, already heading for the door.

“Bring as much as you can carry,” Gwaine shouted after him, securing the plug and turning the taps on cold.

The water choked out much too slowly for Gwaine’s liking. It splashed down over Merlin’s shins and ankles where they were folded into the tub, soaking his jeans, but the level rose inch by agonising inch. Merlin’s head rolled along the back edge of the tub. Gwaine grabbed at him, slightly panicked, but then realised it was as if he were trying to focus on Gwaine with his eyes still closed.

“Got you,” Gwaine said. He cupped his hand to the nape of Merlin’s neck, ignoring the insistent heat, in case the connection might help him somehow.

Merlin’s dry, cracked lips slowly curved, and Gwaine’s own smile at seeing that threatened to stretch his face to breaking. “It’s wet,” Merlin said, hoarse.

“Yes,” Gwaine said. “It’s meant to be cold as well. Can you tell?”

Merlin hummed in his throat, which Gwaine took as a “no.” He hoped Malcolm would get back soon with the ice, before he had his hands full with police or the fire brigade. Someone was bound to have rung 999.

Merlin’s shoulder twitched in an approximation of a shrug. “Ah,” Gwaine said. “Good point. If they mentioned the walking dead, I doubt anyone’s rushing over.”

The first load of ice melted far too quickly, and seemed to do nothing to cool Merlin down, but the next load lasted longer. Malcolm packed it under Merlin’s arms and in the crook of his neck, and Merlin began to speak to him, eyes still closed. “It’s not dead, it can’t die. It lost a lot of food though. Keep... water. While it’s weak. It’ll shove off.”

Malcolm nodded, then seemed to realise that Merlin couldn’t see it. “Thank you,” he said, his voice breaking on the words. When he started layering ice on Merlin’s chest, his hands shook.

Ah, guilt. Gwaine could relate. He had a pretty bad case himself, and his was more deserved. He had dragged Merlin into this in the first place, practically _targeted_ Merlin for it, and because Merlin had turned out to be exactly the man Gwaine had thought he was from afar, he’d ended up here.

“Why don’t you go check on things downstairs?” Gwaine suggested to Malcolm. “We’ll be all right here. Just help me get some water in him first.”

Malcolm found an old cup in the cabinet, washed it out, and filled it with cool water. It was ceramic, weighty, and Gwaine batted Merlin’s hands away when he tried to raise them to take it. Merlin coughed at first, spitting some water back into the cup - and onto Gwaine’s arm - but after that he managed to keep most of it down.

Gwaine set the cup down on the floor and sat back on his heels, relieving some of the strain in his knees. When he looked back at Merlin, his eyes were open at last. They were a worn, tired blue now, ringed by shadows. “There’s ash in your hair,” Merlin said.

“Yours too,” Gwaine said, combing through the mess with his fingers.

“Hmph.” Merlin glanced downwards. Gwaine waited for a comment on the now-filthy water he was lying in, but what Merlin said was, “Thanks for not putting me in an ambulance.”

“I didn’t think you’d appreciate it. And considering the circumstances, I didn’t know if a hospital might do more harm than good.” He paused, thumb slipping over Merlin’s ear, rubbing at his temple. “I still have half a mind to do it anyway.”

“I’m better,” Merlin said. It was true that the fever-red of Merlin’s skin was fading into a calmer pink, but Gwaine wasn’t sure he’d go so far as that. “I’ll be fine. I’ll lie around with a headache and be cranky for a few days, but I'll be fine.”

“You’ll be doing that round mine.” Merlin squinted at Gwaine, clearly dubious. “It’s what partners are for.”

Merlin gave a choked laugh. “You know, I’m never certain which definition of the word you’re going for? And knowing what people mean is sort of my thing.”

“Could be I’m overloading you,” Gwaine said. Because he meant every definition of the word at once, and a healthy dose of laughter at himself too. It was ridiculous, really, how much he knew about Merlin, how much he wanted to work with him and be with him, compared to how little time they’d actually spent together. “But I know what you meant by it,” Gwaine said, teasing, drawing out the words. “You meant sex. You said so.”

“ _She_ meant sex. _I_ was trying to keep you from giving your strength to an elemental.”

“Ta for that.” Gwaine reached down into the icy water, intertwined his fingers with Merlin’s, and thought, deliberately, _I’m much happier giving it to you._

Colour heightened in Merlin’s cheeks. Gwaine was worried for a moment, before he realised that this time, he need not be worried at all. “I said knowing what people mean was my thing,” Merlin said, “but it’s really knowing people. And I know you, now, and - however you meant it, I think I like it. A lot.”

Gwaine gripped the edge of the tub for a better angle. It turned out that he liked Merlin’s smile best of all when it was against his lips.


End file.
